Calafiori injury worry + Rice and Saka in action in Dublin

Good morning.

I played 5-a-side for the first time in some months last night, and there is so much aching today I don’t even have the words for it. What a lot of fun though. And let me tell you something that didn’t happen.

At no point did an opposition player tumble through the air like an extra in a kung-fu movie, and land with their studs on the back of my calf. Because that, my friends, would be an absolutely ridiculous thing to occur, right? It sounds like something I just made up as an extreme example of something you never see on a football pitch, whether it’s 5s in Dublin or, I dunno, an international match between France and Italy.

WRONG!

Look at this nonsense. France’s Ousmane Dembele got tackled, then span through the air like said kung-fu extra, landing studs first on the back of Riccardo Calafiori’s leg. The Arsenal man was completely unaware, which is perfectly normal, because you don’t expect a footballer to spin through the air like that, using your calf as a goddam landing pad.

I saw this last night, and my first thought was ‘This is the kind of thing that could only happen to an Arsenal player’. Like, if a dog ran onto a football pitch and we all enjoyed the fun sight of a dog on the football pitch – evading capture and having a great old time – but the dog would somehow know which player was the Arsenal player, trip him up and break his ankle.

Thankfully, the initial prognosis doesn’t seem to be too bad for Calafiori. Italy boss Luciano Spalletti, says, “We need to assess Riccardo, but with our staff, we’ve a good chance to have him back with us for the next game.”

Which sounds better than I expected but I’m not going to relax just yet. The ‘with our staff’ is doing some heavy lifting for me. Are they just really great staff, or are they gonna Frankenstein his leg just to send him out in their next game? I will be keeping everything crossed.

William Saliba played the full 90 for France, but Italy ran out 3-1…

Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/09/calafiori-injury-worry-rice-and-saka-in-action-in-dublin/

Author : arseblog

Publish date : 2024-09-07 08:15:39

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